On Feb 10, 2013, at 6:05 PM, Jim Thill - Hiawatha Cyclery wrote: > I've been on the receiving end of negative commentary resulting from a > combination of unreasonable expectations and apparent miscommunication. A > recent one was a minor dispute/misunderstanding over a Brooks B67 that went > missing (my fault). I resolved it by offering the customer either a > replacement, refund, or store credit. He said store credit was ok, and left. > The whole transaction seemed friendly and positive - heck, we'd known each > other for years and I considered him a friend. Then a week later, on a public > forum, I see in bold letters JIM THILL IS A THIEF followed by a tale that was > a twisted version of the way I recalled it, culminating in my theft of his > saddle. I tried to communicate my desire to make good several times, but got > vitriol or silence in return.
Ouch. All of your customers that I have met have been really nice folks, so this sort of thing is shocking. > It's possible that Riv tried to appease this guy, too, but he wasn't hearing > it. Riv has, for better and worse, an outsized presence in the virtual world of the Internet, bike magazines and trade journals. Back when I used to read bike mags and newsgroups and bike web sites a lot (my goal is to read about bikes less and ride more, although I have only accomplished the former much to my waistline's chagrin), I would see Grant quoted or references 100 times as often as the CEOs of Trek or Cannondale. Grant has a particular set of viewpoints and ways of running his business and those create some resonance that more "normal" bike manufacturers don't get. Trek and Cannondale etc. get product buzz; Grant gets "velosophy buzz." And that may make him (and by extension Rivendell) more of a target for resentment and getting smeared on the interwebs. Tim -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
